338 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



home at the end with nothing more than a good appetite. It was 

 part of the same etiquette to eat twice in the evening. The women 

 were supposed to have a sort of intuition by which they knew how 

 to have a meal ready when the hunters came home and nearly 

 always we got our food within the first half hour. Three or four 

 hours later we would have a second meal before going to bed. 

 I do not know, or rather I do know, what the orthodox hygienists 

 would say about such things, but I have found the practice to 

 work well, and after all that is the test. 



In my diary I read as follows: "On arrival at camp I found 

 the men had been about to start for a search expedition when they 

 saw me coming. They had had supper and ten hours' sleep and 

 breakfast. Apparently they think a man will collapse from hun- 

 ger after he has been six hours without a snack. I can't get them 

 out of the idea that a meal every five or six hours is necessary. I 

 find twenty hours no hardship so long as my mind is on my job, 

 although when in camp I feel like eating every three or four hours." 



The walk overland with sticky mud on my feet and a ripple of 

 brooks in my ears had convinced me that we had better hurry 

 south. The special point of danger was that if we were too late 

 we might be unable to cross McClure Strait from Melville Island 

 to Banks Island. It was also possible that whaling ships might 

 come to Kellett in early August and we wanted to be at home to 

 make certain purchases and possibly engage a few men to help 

 us. We also expected Wilkins with the North Star in early Sep- 

 tember and I wanted to be there to meet him so he would not be 

 compelled to wait, for it was my intention to board the Star with 

 two dog teams and three or four of the men best adapted to 

 sledge travel and proceed as far north as possible. Accordingly, I 

 asked Storkerson and Thomsen to take the sled which they had been 

 hitching up to search for me and proceed with it eastward to spy 

 out the land, having in mind that they had to be back in time for 

 a short sleep before we started out in the evening for home. 



Storkerson returning reported that he had gone about fifteen 

 miles east and that from the top of a hill two or three hundred 

 feet high he had seen land twenty or thirty miles farther to the 

 east. To the south he had seen islands which we had noted a 

 day or two before and beyond them a more distant and larger land 

 which was probably Emerald Isle. This latter he had seen in a 

 sort of mirage. 



